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48
By Brett Leigh Dicks
While it has been six years since Cowboy
Junkies last released a new album, the
Canadian alternative-county collective has
been far from idle.
The band has toured consistently though
the United States and Canada across that
period and even made the occasional
foray into the United Kingdom. The
have contributed songs to various one-off
projects as well as rerecording and releasing
selection of older material. The band’s
songwriter, guitarist and producer, Michael
Timmins, has also undertaken a variety of
production work for other artists.
All of this has helped the time between
Cowboy Junkies albums slip through their
collective fingers.
“We’ve been busy – we’ve been touring
all along and doing some one-off stuff,
contributing tracks here and there,”
Timmins recently told Rhythms Magazine.
“We released a three package box set of
some albums we did in the 1990’s and
2000’s and added some new recordings of
songs that didn’t make it onto the original
albums. We haven’t been idle.”
With their last full-length recording, the
2012 release The Wilderness, being the final
installment of the four part Nomad Series
of albums recorded and released in the
space of just 18 months, one can forgive
the band for taking some time to collect its
creative thoughts.
“The Nomad Series was a pretty intensive
period of writing and recording and I
definitely needed a break after that,”
Timmins said. “The Nomad Series was a
big statement and a big effort and after
that I just wasn’t ready to record again.
About two years ago Margo asked if we’re
going to make a new record and I looked
at the clock and thought, well, I better start
thinking about it.”
Not wanting to make a record just for the
sake of having a new record, Timmins
started writing with the view of seeing
what materialised – and the songs quickly
started coming. Written over a two-year
period and recorded in the band’s Toronto-
based studio, All That Reckoning, is a deeply
personal album fuelled by both Timmins’
personal introspection and it’s interface
with the world and its current state of play.
“After writing for a while I found a lot
of the songs had a nice duality of being a
commentary on personal crisis as well as
social crisis and that to me began to form
something that had meaning and focus to
it,” Timmins said. “Once that happened
things started to roll and then there came a
reason to record a new record. I didn’t want
to make it a big political statement record
so the personal aspect is very important to
making this record because it allows the
listener to hear a song and connect with it
on a personal level.”
A poignant example of that can be found
in the songs “All That Reckoning Part 1”
and “All That Reckoning Part 2.”
While the first installment of the song
tackles the dread associated with a
relationship in crisis, the second part
unleashes all the pent-up angst. With
the album’s soul coming from Michael
Timmins’ elegantly refined guitar work and
DAY OF RECKONING
The Cowboy Junkies new album is deeply personal.